1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to information security. More specifically, this disclosure relates to techniques and systems for parameterizable cryptography.
2. Related Art
Organizations commonly encrypt information to protect it from unauthorized accesses. Specifically, encryption can be used to ensure that a user is allowed to access information only if the user satisfies certain conditions. For example, the user may be allowed to access information only if the user proves that the user is above a certain age and that the user has paid for the information.
Due to rapid advances in computing and communication technologies, the ability to collect and exploit private information has grown exponentially. As a result, it has become very important to enable individuals and organizations to protect private information.
Conventional techniques which grant access to protected information usually require large amounts of storage to keep track of keys, and also usually require communication between multiple systems, e.g., between the key generator and the key escrow agent, which can make these techniques vulnerable to attacks. Further, these techniques may reveal private information because they do not enable the user to access a piece of protected content without revealing to the system which piece of protected content the user is accessing.